How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining complex information.

Charts and graphs can help to make data simpler and easier to grasp.

You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with numbers, percentages and relationships more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand the information.

Graphs and charts help you explain complex data so people can more easily understand it!

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create colorful and updatable charts and graphs to WordPress that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile browsing

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your files and an image into your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add dynamic bar charts and pie charts to your WordPress pages and posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a great free plugin for WordPress users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic data.

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (we will explain how to do this further down the page), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed attractive and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks.

Visualizer uses Google Visualization API to render charts, which support cross-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases, and are based on pure HTML5/SVG technology (adopting VML for old IE versions), so no extra plugins are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts that are optimized to address your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

Visualizer is flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your site’s design. A number of options are available for each chart that let you fully customize their look.

Additionally, charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG technology to provide cross-browser compatibility (including VML for older IE versions) and cross platform portability to iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Your visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without having to install extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

In the Add Plugins screen type search for “visualizer” and click enter …

Locate the item in the search results area and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library in your main menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings page …

After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your library.

Visualizer Configuration

To add a chart or graph to the library, click on Add New …

An image gallery displaying all the kinds of graphs and charts available will come up on your screen.

Select the graph or chart type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …

The graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with all the data you would like your chart or graph to be populated with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row contains the column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. number, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the above requirements …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just download the sample file supplied with the plugin.

Next, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload a CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your data file and click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

To learn how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing your data, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve picked, the plugin will display a range of customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control of your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, font styles, tooltip, and legend.
• Pie Settings – Create 3D pie charts, draw slices counterclockwise, set the text content displayed on the slice, create a “donut” pie chart, rotate the chart’s “start” angle and set the slice border color.
• Residue Settings – Set the ‘Visibility Threshold’ (the slice relative part, below which a slice will not show individually.), ‘Residual Slice Label’ (the label for the combination slice that holds all slices below slice visibility threshold, e.g. “Other”), and ‘Residue Slice Color’.
• Slice Settings – Customize the ‘Slice Offset’ (how far to separate the slice from the rest of the pie), and ‘Slice Color’.
• Layout & Chart Area – Configure the layout (total size of chart) including the width and height of the chart as a number of percentage, background color for the main area of the chart and the chart border width and color, and the placement and size of the chart area (where the chart itself is drawn, excluding axis and legends).

Once you are satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

The new chart or graph will now be added to your ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this allows you to easily embed graphs and charts into your content …

Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …

After a new graph or chart has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or trash it …

Plugin Usage

After creating a new graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to pages and posts is really simple.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Next, place your mouse cursor where you want to insert your visual element into your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the element to be added to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will add a shortcode into your content …

Once you have finished adding the visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

After publishing your page/post, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

You will see your chart or graph in your content …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for mobile screens …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is very convenient if you’re managing interactive graph data in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin have created a series of tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use the Visualizer plugin for WordPress.

For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, go to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert appealing and dynamic pie charts and graphs into WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

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